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Håkon A. Hjortland
Asked: 2018-03-18 13:25:35 +0800 CST

Screen tearing in Firefox when using Sawfish

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When using the Sawfish window manager, there is screen tearing in videos in Firefox. How to fix this?

xorg firefox tearing sawfish

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    To fix this, run a compositor (these provide off-screen buffers for each window) alongside your non-compositing window manager. Compton seems to do the trick.

    Install the needed packages and add this to .gnomerc:

    # To get tearing-free video in Firefox
hsetroot -solid '#000000'
compton --backend glx &             # Worked for me in Ubuntu 16.04
compton --backend xr_glx_hybrid &   # Works for me in Ubuntu 18.04

    The hsetroot line is needed if the background goes gray.

    My setup:
    Software: Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS, Firefox 59.0.1, Sawfish 1.11, and Compton 0.1~beta2.
    Graphics: RADEON(0): Chipset: "CAICOS" (ChipID = 0x6779)

    Tearing tests:

    More information:

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